Your Sports Photography Sales Numbers – They Count!

The sports photography business is exciting and challenging at the same time. Sports photography business requires: sales presentation and bidding to get the account, picture day, delivering the packages in a timely manner with great quality and rebooking that contract for next year. But one very important part of the business that many photographers overlook is taking the time to review your sales. It’s great to get new contracts, but a few changes and adjustments to your prepay flyer can increase the sales you have through your existing business!

Here is the basic process I use to analyze sports photography sales numbers:

Put the sales numbers from a job right on a flyer for that program. Put the number of packages ordered next to each package and add-on item.

Analyze it: look at the packages and look at how memory mates were purchased.

Ask yourself: What packages were not bought at all or very little. Is it because of the price or because of the package contents?

Ask yourself: What packages sold the most that are the least expensive? Should I make those packages less attractive so customers need to move up to a higher priced package with better contents or should I raise the price?

If you have add ons IN your packages:

Ask yourself: Does the add-on move a customer away from that package because they are not interested in the add-on?
I don’t recommend putting add-on items in packages.

When looking at the add-on section of your sports price list think of the following:

Look at the individual sales for an item. If a product does not sell, give it another year at a lower price.

Some products like plaques, ESPN, statuettes dog tags etc. should be left on regardless of sales because they give a level of professionalism in the eyes of customers.

Look at the sales of add-on prints. This gives an idea of what size prints your customer favors and can help you make packages more appealing.

Keep in mind: Things differ from league to league; therefore, analyzing each league helps to better serve your customer and to discover their buying tendencies.

Many photographers tell me that they do not have time to do this, but you can’t afford to not analyze your numbers. Your sales depend upon it!